Brian'sOpen Letter To All Of Advertising And Marketing seems to have developed a life of its own over the last few days. Earlier I counted more than twelve pages of google links to different places that have posted it. It's heartening to see that so many people related to it. But as it spread further afield, people started to ask "Is this even a real letter from a member of the public?". The answer is, obviously (I thought), no.

The letter was based on conversations I've had with mates of mine who aren't in the business, in fact Brian is based on one of them. It's simply a bit of fun at the expense of those poor deluded people in the ad and marketing business who seem to think that members of the public have nothing better to do than wait for the next lame marketing scheme. Now, obviously there are those rare occasions when something catches the imagination of the public, or is interesting enough to work. But mostly, it seems like marketers and advertising agencies mistakenly imagine that Joe public is waiting with bated breath to spend their valuable time participating in some half-arsed scheme for relatively low-interest products. They are not.